Homecoming Queen

It's the Year of Homecoming here in Scotland. Three hundred events are scheduled between Burns Day on the 25 January through to November. Pageantry, pipers and tartan abound.

The official line is that the Homecoming Year will recognise and celebrate a unique cultural heritage and welcome "home" the estimated 100 million people in the world with a 'blood link' to Scotland.

It has also been pointed out that it is a good way for Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, to incite a little nationalist fervour and further cement the Scottish National Party as the natural government of choice. Besides, finding another reason to fleece the tourists by offloading shitloads of tartan, whisky and Loch Ness monster hats never goes astray, especially when there is a recession lurking in the wings.

It has not gone unnoticed that many of these ancient traditions are in fact a Victorian invention, conjured up by Sir Walter Scott. Ever on the lookout for a good promotional opportunity, when the George IV came north for a "King's Jaunt" in 1822 Scott went out of his way to ensure that there was never a dull moment. As Stuart Kelly points out in his article (well worth a read), the grand tradition of fleecing tourists for over-priced tartan was born: the King paid the modern equivalent of £1,123,750 for his.

One of the biggest Homecoming events was the Clan Gathering (25-26 July). Hordes of visitors from New Zealand, USA, Australia, Germany, Canada (among others) wearing little laminated access passes flooded into to Holyrood Park. Despite the fact that J had spent the morning grumbling to his barber about the whole thing being a 'pile of pants' I made him trek into the Old Town to watch the parade at the end. A parade's a parade, after all. Besides, what better way to start to get my head around all this clan business?

Each clan carried a sign, like at the Olympics, and the names were announced by loudspeaker. The leaders were usually all tartaned up, but various codes of dress applied thereafter. Americans sported bum-bags, shades and tartan bandanas. A Maori sported a full set of facial tattoos and traditional ceremonial cloak. Everyone was waving, a few were staggering, some of the old folk looked like it may well be one parade too many.

Many 'homecomers' from the diaspora had brought their own ornate banners to declare their allegiance. In general, the non-Scots were looking either baffled or delighted to the point of tears. One large American man marched up the middle of the street waving to the crowd and, with his hand on his heart, kept announcing "I've come home! I've come home!" John Michie of Taggart fame was spotted in the front line of one group, and the crowd greeting him with an spontaneous chorus of "There's been a murrrrrderrrrrr!" It was a warm and warm and sunny evening, pipe bands were playing Scotland the Brave ad infinitum and people were waving and giving a a little cheer when their own clan passed by.

Suddenly the laughing was replaced by a loud, resounding and quite sustained booing. The Campbells had arrived.

Its a long and complicated story (see a short account courtesty of the BBC. Wikipedia has a longer one), but basically Campbell soldiers were being housed and fed under the laws of highland hospitality by a bunch of McDonalds who had failed, despite attempts, to declare allegiance to the King William of Orange by the specified deadline. The Campbell lads had been sharing the houses of the McDonalds for 12 days when they received the order to kill. On the night of February 13, thirty-eight McDonalds were slaughtered in their beds, with many others perishing when they fled into the blizzard outside.

The Massacre of Glen Coe, as it is now known, occured in 1692, but apparently there is at least one pub in the are that display a notice that they accept 'No Hawkers or Campbells'.

The booing was reasonably good natured, but it was there. It was the booing, as much as the pipe bands, that made you believe that Scottish history is alive and well.

It's a jungle out there

This is Limpo the Elephant. See that nasty kink in his rear left leg? When Limpo was an unnamed baby elephant otherwise undifferentiated from the other little bundles of elephant joy, he was assaulted by an angry rhino, who had taken exception to him for a reason that probably only the elephants remember. Maybe he waved his trunk in an insulting fashion at the waterhole, or something.

The rhino in question went completely balllistic and though Limpo managed to escape with his life, his leg was severely damaged. They feared that the damage might be fatal, but he healed up alright and was able to move about and feed himself. Crisis over. Years went by, Limpo limped and ate and ate and limped and grew and grew and behaved in a generally elephantine fashion, as befitting a strong young elephant in his prime.

Then one day, Limpo went out and found the nearest rhino and beat it to death.

Well, the park people thought, its a jungle out there. Or a veldt, anyway. Shit happens. Disputes occur, hormones rage, tempers flare. Occasional tragedies ensue. A little while later, though, he did it again. Another rhino bites the dust. As months stretched into years, the park people realised that this was not a simple, straightforward crime of passion. As the death toll mounted, they realised they had a serial killer on their hands. Limpo was waging a one-elephant war on the rhino race. It was rhino-cide on a grand scale.

By the time the fifteenth rhino had died a violent and bloody death, capital punishment must have been looking like a pretty good option. Can't have your tourists coming across murder scenes when they are out to take their pretty pictures of the Big Five. Instead, though, they brought in a heavy hitter, in the form of in another elephant. A chilled old elephant from further North. An elephant with gravitas and wisdom. An elephant carrying the weight of a great many years and thus, seniority. Most important of all, The Grand Old Elephant Of The North got along extraordinarily well with rhinos.

In what must be one of the world's all-time greatest triumphs of criminal rehabilitation, after the two elephants had spent some time together, the slaughter ended. The old elephant eventually went back home, and Limpo, as far as anyone knows, hasn't harmed a hair on the rhino's head since.

I love a happy ending.

P.S. apologies to the people I sent photos to referring to 'hippo-cide': it was a slip of the brain.

Murderous Gulls and Eviscerated Pigeons

We were concerned about the pigeons from the start, but we had no idea just how deep and dark were the perils they negotiated every day.

There's a lot of them in Venice. You don't need to go to the Piazza San Marco, where tourists stand with bags of grain and enjoy the sensation of being shat on simultaneously by hundred of Rats With Wings, to know that your average Venetian pigeon does not work very hard for its supper.

Initially, our main source of concern was their health. The squares and alleyways were dotted with pigeons so rotund that it appeared that they really couldn't be fagged trying to get airborne. We nearly trod on one more than once, but it didn't seem to bother them too much. A slightly irritated flap was about the most response we could get. And not many cats around, with all that water. J queried a Venetian collegue about it later.

'Ah, yes,' the chap replied sagely. 'We are the only city where the lions fly and the birds walk.'

Then we found remains. Curious ones, though. The pigeon in question had met a very sticky end, but whatever or whoever had killed didn't seem to have eaten it, as most of it was there on the pavement. Its not like we lingered or anything, but you could help noticing that this flying fatsos had not met a natural death. Way too much gore. Perhaps it had a coronary and exploded in the spasm? Unlikely.

Anyway, we hurried to the nearest church to check out some more pleasant portrayals of murder and mayhem courtesy of Tintoretto, Giotto et al.: a little nailing blokes to a stick here, a little Judith decapitating someone there... You know the kind of thing. We forgot our murdered pigeon.

By the time we remembered, our sympathy had worn off. We were sitting in the rose garden having a rather nice prosecco in the afternoon sunshine, when the people at the next table decided to leave. (I believe they were a father and daughter on a custody holiday. Jim believes I am, in this respect, a niaive idiot.) They left behind a half-empty bowl of chips. Within about 30 seconds the delicate porcelain was full of porky pigeons climbing on eachother, scuffling and squawking and executing some quite impressive hip-and-shoulder action to get to sit in the chips, as if it was a salty, saturated fat birdbath. When sparrows do it its kind of cute. When overweight pigeons do it, you just feel kinda soiled for even watching. And a little nervous, a la Tippi Hedren..

We were wishing they would go away. Then suddenly they did. A big gull had arrived to take a seat at the table. We didn't know why, because it seemed completely uninterested in the chips. The pigeons weren't going anywhere near it. It just sat there, looking at them. They sat on the canal wall a good three or four metres away, looking kind of hunched, like they were trying not to be noticed, and staying unnaturally quiet. I can't honestly say they were trembling, but their beady (and it has to be said, not very attractive)little eyes never left that gull. They were so scared that it took a full minute after the gull left for them to start swarming again.

I have to thank John Berendt for the answer. According to his gossipy little tome about Venice, the gulls are doing the pigeons in. The glossy gulls are nearly as well fed as the fat pigeons, so they restrict their diet to delicacies, like the Doges of old. (Obviously no-one made them eat their crusts when they were chicks.) Apparently when they fancy a light snack, they chase down a lazy pigeon, stab it through the chest and eat its still-beating little pigeon heart, discarding the rest for the Rats Without Wings to clean up later.

I don't know why, but it all strikes me as oddly Venetian.